Blood & Fire
by enRAGEd
Summary: Request for Shakahnna. Wesker is followed by Shak as he takes his leave from Africa. The battle to preserve or destroy the final sample of Uroboros takes an unanticipated turn, becoming a war of God against God.


**A/N:** I like Resident Evil 5 for one reason only: Co-op Mode. If it wasn't for the fact that I can play it with my girlfriend, I'd never have wasted so many hours of my life with it. Even then, it's only the Mercenaries we play with any frequency, because the plot and characterisations were the weakest of the series thus far. Personally, I think I've written far too much RE5 fan fiction, considering how much I dislike that game. Then again, it is the one in need of the most improvement.

This story is more of a laugh than anything else. A very talented artist on Deviant Art (named J0SER0; he's worth a look) drew a picture for my girlfriend of her OC and Wesker having bonded with Uroboros. Unfortunately, the artist's comments gave the wrong impression about Shak and Wesker's relationship (Shak despises everything about Wesker; Wesker, in turn, views Shak as little more than an annoyance/a bit of fun). I jokingly commented that I could see potential for a story in the picture, and so my love requested that I make good on my bragging.

I wanted to get back to basics with this story. Shak and Wesker have too many stories where they're getting along, and not enough where they're beating the crap out of one another. I attribute that to Wesker having all his ducks in a row in my other works. This time, his power is far from consolidated. You might saw he's a few ducks short of a row. I also wanted to justify Wesker's idiocy in the game in taking a potentially unstable virus into his body, especially when it had turned its previous hosts into the Chef's Special. Thus the differences in story.

I maintain that the joy of fan fiction is taking what you like and leaving what you don't, improving on the weak plot elements and expanding on the strong ones. The change in Wesker's character was definitely the weakest part of a very poorly written game, but Capcom themselves admitted that their focus with RE5 was on gameplay, not storyline. In the end, that just leaves more work for us fan fiction writers.

And on that note, enjoy.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Her body burning with exertion, Shakahnna dragged herself clear of the cargo plane's loading ramp as it groaned shut. She rolled down the incline, slamming against the metal deck. Even as she pushed herself up, she could feel the uneasy lilt of flight beneath her feet. But she was stout - a squat, barrel of a woman - and she rode the sway with ease. She checked her equipment, checked herself for injuries, and then flexed her claws. All present and correct.

Less than an hour ago, it had been her and a B.S.A.A platoon versus the two-hundred strong People's Revolutionary Army - a bunch of former guerrillas turned into mindless drones by the parasite Las Plagas. Good odds, by her standards. A surprisingly competent resistance, and a colossal tentacle monster, later, and it was just her. It had been a long, hard battle just to get this far. She hadn't thought about how she was going to handle Wesker yet.

"Ms Morgan," he greeted, emerging from the cockpit, hands folded behind his back, "my pilot informed me of an irregularity in our departure. I must confess that I have underestimated your penchant for interfering in my affairs."

"Up yours, faggot," she said, flipping him off, "running away like a bitch? I think I underestimated how much of a fucking pussy you are."

He dismissed her taunts with a casual wave of his hand. "I have invested considerable resources in this project. Those sacrifices would provide no profit to me if the facility were to be destroyed along with the only remaining sample of my prize."

She spied the metal capsule bolted to the floor, filling one side of the compartment. "Uroboros" was stencilled across it in thick, black letters. It didn't look like much of a prize.

She sneered. "Tail between your legs and everything. Funny, because to hear Excella tell it, you two were all loved up and going to take over the world together."

"What Miss Gionne believed is immaterial. Uroboros remains far too unstable to be of any use to me. If it were to be released in its current form, it would plunge the world into disorder. And I am not a man who tolerates disorder."

"I'll never know how you manage to make immortality sound so fucking boring."

His lips curled upwards, but the smile was devoid of humour. That was just like him. Everything was facts and figures and plans of action. Nothing he ever did brought him any enjoyment, save obeying his sadistic impulses. Even then, he restrained himself with a veneer of dignity and respectability so much of the time. At best, it was catharsis, for all the times he had suppressed his true nature - the born killer inside.

She wondered why he didn't just kill himself or, better yet, let her do it for him. It wasn't like the joyless cunt had anything to really live for.

He surged towards her, body transforming into a dark blur. She acted on instinct, throwing herself out of the way and rolling into a crouch, hand clasped around her sidearm and aiming at him. His hand hung in the air where her ribcage had been mere moments before.

When she opened fire, he disappeared again, evading her shot with a simple sidestep. She tracked him, her .45 barking every time he revealed himself, until she had emptied her magazine at empty air, each shot ricocheting off the aircraft's armour-plated innards.

She grunted, teeth clenched. "Shit."

She dove forward into a roll, slapping a fresh clip into her gun, and then slammed down, flat on her back. A gloved hand reaching for the back of her head found emptiness beneath its fingertips. Predatory eyes hidden by sunglasses locked on her, and the pistol clasped in her hands, and then he was gone again, a bullet flattening on the wall behind him.

His right leg came down in an axe kick, but she had already tucked her arms into her chest and rolled away. When fighting Wesker, you didn't stand still. Not if you were attached to your vital functions. She uncurled mid-rotation, extending her arm and squeezing off a shot, before she kept rolling, doing the same thing a second and third time. Each movement increased the distance between them, and each bullet, though wasted, kept him at bay for just a little longer.

She reached the door to the cockpit, firing off the rest of her second reload. Again, every last bullet turned into a fat, lead mushroom against the far wall, and she was left spent. Still, there was something satisfying about shooting her load at Wesker, even if she didn't manage to get it inside him. She grinned at her own wit, and then lunged to the side as he came at her, his fist aimed right at her head.

He pulverised the wall, his knuckles buckling the titanium plating. When he looked back at her, she took great pleasure in offering him the broadest grin in her arsenal, before yanking down on the ramp's release lever. With a blare of klaxons and a flash of warning lights, the door at the rear of the compartment began to yawn open.

Their altitude and speed combined to create a sucking vortex that dragged her opponent off his feet and pulled him backwards towards the gaping mouth behind him. She clung to the switch, still grinning, as his back cracked around a steel beam, before his fingers fastened on it, anchoring him in place.

"Fucking cockroach," she muttered, her smile faltering.

Before she could think about what a bad idea it was, she released her handhold and thumped into the Uroboros capsule, her body jolting with the impact. Then, she checked her remaining ammunition. She had one round left. The fight with the Majini had whittled her once excessive arsenal away, and now she was fighting the worst B.O.W Umbrella had ever let loose on the world with next to nothing.

There was an old adage in the B.S.A.A: "Always save your last bullet."

The sentiment was correct, even if she didn't agree with the application. She could think of only one person in that plane who needed to be put out of his misery.

She clambered up onto the metal cylinder, one-shot pistol in hand, and locked eyes with her adversary, mouth twisted in a malicious leer. Then, she grabbed the control box for the cradle, which was swinging on its cable from the ceiling. She thumbed the release button and got ready for the ride.

Wesker turned out to be as predictable as she expected. Determined to protect his investment, he released his hold on the strut he was clinging to and intercepted the capsule, blocking its path and bringing it to a whiplash-inducing halt.

Shakahnna skidded forward, her skin prickling with cold sweat as she envisioned herself flying over his head and out into the howling oblivion beyond. Instead, the grip of her thick thighs allowed her to maintain her position, though by the time she was able to stop herself, she was grinning right into his emotionless face. He looked up at her, a single eyebrow rising behind his shades, his eyes flaring.

"Kiss, kiss, lover."

She jammed the barrel of her Colt against the right lens of his sunglasses and pulled the trigger. Muzzle flash lit his features, and for a moment she was forced to concede that he wore a death mask well. Glass and metal fell away from his face in shattered pieces, his head snapped back, and she prepared herself for the trip she was about to take. At least she'd have company.

But they didn't fall. Instead, his body went rigid, his remaining eye glared up at her, and then she was flying backwards atop the capsule, clinging to it for all she was worth. It slammed back into its cradle. In the next second, he was there, restraining it, wrenching the steel around to secure it in place. A crimson teardrop ran down his right cheek, the hollow socket filled with blood, but he was otherwise unaffected.

She turned, clambering up the cylinder towards the cockpit, even as he focused on the task at hand. For the moment, she wasn't the focus of his attention, and part of her was relieved. If she hadn't built up an immunity to adrenaline after over a decade of pushing herself to the limit, she'd probably have been quivering with it right about then.

She dragged herself to the door, yanking it open and then bracing herself against the inner frame so that she could pull it shut again.

"What the hell's going on back there?" the pilot yelled, glancing over her shoulder, before lunging for the pistol holstered beside her seat, "who the fuck are you?"

Shak locked her hand around the woman's wrist, slapping the spit out of her mouth with a backhand, before taking the gun and slipping it into her own belt.

"We're landing," she said, sliding her arms around her shoulders and leaning into her face, pointing out through the glass towards a dark, isolated land mass below, "there."

She trailed one of her claws down the girl's cheek, leaving a thin trail of crimson in its wake.

"Or I'm going to make your last few moments on this earth very, _very _fucking uncomfortable."

-x-x-x-x-x-

Shak scraped herself up off the floor of the cockpit, her world spinning, her eyes hazy. Her entire frame was stiff with bruising after the pounding she'd taken during the crash. The plane had less landed and more skimmed across a plateau of black rock, shaking itself apart with each bounce. At some point, she'd landed on her head and fallen into unconsciousness, which was rare for her, robust little brick outhouse that she was.

She'd gotten off lucky. The pilot had tried to escape when she had been bouncing around the place, and a sharp buck of the deck beneath her feet had sent her flying headlong into the rear wall. The sound of her neck breaking had been loud enough to hear over the ringing in her ears.

She wasn't sure how much later it was, but the plane had come to a complete halt, and had been stable for a while, as far as she could tell. She stood up, wincing as the deck groaned beneath her feet.

There was a bulge of bruising on her head that made her skin feel like it was stretched taut, and a fissure ran along her hairline. She wore a dried skein of blood over the right side of her face. Apart from that, everything else seemed to be in order, though she had broken a nail. One of her claws was shorter than the others and that made her swear for a solid five minutes. Her blades were near irreplaceable.

The other woman's limp corpse was lying by the entrance to the hold. Its head was twisted at a sickening angle, a line of bloody saliva escaping its slack mouth, its eyes glazed and staring. The door had buckled inside its frame, leaving a gap the size of her head, and something dark was pulsating, pushing in through the hole. Its hundreds of tiny, shapeless limbs groped at the body, pulling at it, pressing into its skin, burrowing through its flesh.

The Uroboros was slow, uncertain, not like she had seen it before, when it had been ravenous and frenzied, consuming corpses by the dozen. Perhaps it was shaking off the confusion from its time in stasis, just as she was trying to orient herself with a head wound.

Either way, it would need vital cells to assimilate if it wanted to prolong itself in the outside world. And, as the only supply of tasty, nutritious vital cells in the vicinity, she knew it was time to bail out, and quick. Wesker had said it was dangerous, and he had probably been right. He was many things - a long list of colourful adjectives - but not the kind to use overstatement.

She smirked to herself. One of those adjectives was "dead". If the monster was out, chances were it had reduced him to spaghetti already. No huge loss. But if she didn't get out of its way then it would do the same to her.

The entire aircraft had crumpled on impact, its armoured hull tearing open at the seams. Sundered metal bore the wounds where rivets had been fired out like bullets by the pressure. The cockpit had split along a line of welding, leaving a gap that looked wide enough to accommodate her ample frame without too much effort.

She managed to get halfway before her tactical vest snagged on a bolt and she was forced to slice it away. When she was almost out, she caught her shoulder on a jagged sliver jutting from the metal, which cut open her sleeve and sent a cascade of blood rolling down her arm. She wriggled free, cursing, and then took a moment to ensure she was landing on solid ground before she leapt down.

She checked herself over. The head injury had healed, or at least congealed, for now, and the slash across her arm fit in nicely with the hundreds of others, self-inflicted and not, that the hole in her shirt revealed. If clotting had been an Olympic discipline, she'd have taken the gold, so it wasn't a problem. It did make her look like she was wearing one crimson glove though.

The air stank like burning and the sulphur smell of weapons' discharge. Sweat stuck her shirt to her back, and her hair hung in clumped strings around her head. It was hot out and, when she neared the edge of the ridge where the plane had crashed, she saw why.

Molten rock was running in a thick tide beneath, bubbling and rolling and smoking. It careened between islands and pillars and spires, slow and unstoppable. Embers drifted through the dead air like fireflies, and swarms of cinders settled and nested on every surface. She shielded her face from the heat haze rising off its surface, coughing as she felt the gauzy breathlessness of ash settling in her lungs.

"For fuck's sake," she grunted, "this is getting fucking ridiculous."

Before she could even start to think about how she was going to get out of this one, her radio sputtered into life, and she fished it out of her hip pack. She had slipped it in there after she'd lost her headset during a firefight with the Majini. That was fortunate, considering that her jacket was now a pile of rags on the cockpit floor. She could have kissed herself, but settled for a promise of later.

"This is Captain Josh Stone, transmitting to all B.S.A.A personnel," a distorted voice blared from the handset, raised to be heard over the sound of thrumming rotors, "does anyone copy? Is there anyone still alive out there?"

His tone was heavy with frustration. It didn't seem like he was having any luck raising anyone. It was enough to destroy what little hope she might have had that some of her fellow agents had lived through the assault on the Tricell tanker. Still, hearing even one of her fellow good guys alive was enough to bring a smile to her face.

"Music to my fucking ears, Captain," she responded, "this is Shak Morgan, B.S.A.A America. What's your status?"

"I'm in a chopper, tracking the tanker due west. Was your mission a success? Have the suspects been apprehended?

"Gionne's a confirmed kill, and I don't fancy Wesker's chances much either," she told him, hesitating for a second as she got to the bad news, "but my team are all dead. I'm the only one left."

"That makes two of us," he said, his voice grim, and then he let out a sigh, "alright, what's your position?"

She looked around. "Not sure. We left the tanker by jet and crashed down on an island off the coast."

"Any landmarks?"

"There's a river of lava, if that helps."

She heard him chuckle. "I think I know where you are, Miss Morgan. Just hold tight. I'll be there soon."

"Take your time," she insisted, "little bit of molten rock never hurt anyone."

She tucked the radio back into her pack and got ready to wait. After what she had just been through, she was looking forward to a little bit of whimsy, a chance to sit on the precipice and watch the lava rolling past. She'd never been inside a live volcano before, and she decided it was going on her list of things to do before she was murdered. Because people like her never just died.

There was a loud clang behind her, coming from inside the plane. Her heart lurched, a cold prickle needling her spine, and then she turned, dread rising inside her. Another clang rang out, a knell in the near-silence of the crash site, and she found herself praying that it was just the frame of the aircraft warping with the heat.

And then there was a pop, like something giving way under a heavy blow. The groan of bending metal followed as the hull was forced to concede. Like a dead man rising from a grave, and she had seen more than a few do that, Albert Wesker emerged.

He stood atop the wreck, looking down at her, and she could feel herself back away a step, compelled by the weight of his gaze. That was a mistake. Showing him fear was giving him too much. She swallowed it down.

"You don't know when to fucking quit, do you?" she snarled.

He didn't respond. There was a stiffness to his movements. It could just have been the pain of his injuries. A slight tension in the way he walked was usually the only way he betrayed his agony, that was true, but this seemed like something more.

He was half-naked, stripped to the waist, and a skein of sweat covered his torso. The heat forced even his body, with its viral augmentation, to compensate. Any damage he might have suffered, any reason he might have had to remove his shirt, was already gone. Her eyes took in the powerful limbs and solid abdomen. Seeing that familiar musculature after so many years gave her a quiver of nostalgia, and a stab of revulsion.

She hungered to have her claws under that flesh again, both for old times' sake and for now. And that was when she realised what was wrong with him.

His skin was moving, bulging in places, as though something was slithering beneath. Uroboros had gotten inside of him. In fact, he'd probably been the first port of call when it had escaped its confinement. He was riddled with it, hundreds of burrowing, crawling masses wriggling like worms. For a moment, she thought she might vomit.

He let out a grunt, his lips peeling back around the grimace hiding behind, and then his skin split, bursting in a dozen different places. Oily black tendrils, each slick with his blood, whipped and coiled around his body, encircling his arms, his torso, his neck. His mouth fell open, his eyes rolling back in his head, and for a moment she dared to hope that he was dying, consumed by the same parasite he'd been using Tricell to manufacture. The parasite that, in the end, had been just another business venture, another way to gouge capital out of the biological weapons market.

Let him die. Let him suffer. Let him turn into a pile of tentacles like his other subjects, like his "partner", Excella Gionne, and then she would burn him alive in the earth's lifeblood.

But it didn't happen. Seconds later, the growths protruding from his body were sucked back beneath his skin, leaving only wounds weeping dark ichor. And even those wouldn't last.

The silence droned on for a few moments longer, and then he spoke.

"To think that I had dismissed the Uroboros project as a failure," he mused, examining his own bloody hands, "it appears that I was simply in need of a more robust subject. I owe you my thanks. Without your interference, this illuminating turn of events may not have been possible."

"Why don't you come down here and thank me up close, cunt?" she asked, baring her teeth in something between a snarl and a grin.

She felt a chill roll down her back yet again as he obliged, leaping down to the plateau on which she was standing. Her reward would be the same as anyone else who'd outlived their usefulness to him. He was going to kill her, without remorse, regrets or second thoughts.

Weighing up her options, she did the only sensible thing. She turned and leapt off the ridge.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Her knees buckled when she hit the scorched rock. She slammed face-first into the ground, letting out a grunt that blew up a cloud of ash around her. The side of her face started to throb, but she didn't give it time to get started. Instead, she forced herself to her feet and into a run, her stout legs bearing her up the slope and away from Wesker.

It was hotter down here, closer to the lake. She was counting on that. She knew Uroboros was allergic to fire. In fact, that was how she'd managed to take down its previous three incarnations. The creature was definitely the weak link here. No matter what she'd used in the past, nothing ever seemed to faze him. Of all the monsters she had fought, he was the worst, the most dangerous, the most frightening.

Sweat poured off her. She wondered how long before she collapsed from exhaustion. Hopefully, she had long enough to put him in the ground.

When he came after her, she knew it. His landing shook the earth. She could feel his eyes boring into the back of her head, piercing her, killing her with a look. She knew what his hands were capable of, and she knew what he would do if he managed to get them around her neck. That was why she was going to run the fuck away. No fucking chance.

She pushed on, her breathing heavy as the exertion took its toll. She wasn't much for fleeing. For her, fight was better than flight any day. But she was built for stamina, if not for speed, and the incline combined with the heat and the thickness of the air didn't deter her. Pretty soon, she'd reached the peak.

A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed what she already knew. He was still coming after her.

Fallen rocks littered the raised ground where she was standing. Some kind of collapse had shaken them loose from an overhanging ridge, and they were going to be her equaliser. She put her boot to a few smaller boulders, mostly no larger than her head, and sent them tumbling down to meet him. His response was simply to stride past them, or sidestep them if they were on target. Then, she put her shoulder to the largest of the stones, one that was around three times bigger than even he was and weighed what felt like a ton.

She pushed, and shoved, and struggled, her feet skidding against the ground, her muscles aching, until she was panting and red in the face. With a final, desperate ram, she knocked it loose from its perch and sent it rolling down the slope towards him.

And then it stopped. It hadn't even moved more than ten metres.

It rose, as though it was levitating, and then she saw him standing behind it, revealed from the feet up. Leather combat boots, black uniform trousers, a chiselled and unyielding abdomen, and then two arms wreathed in growths of Uroboros, bearing the boulder aloft. His face was the last thing to appear, his features refusing to betray even a hint of exertion.

Her first bullet smashed into his forehead. The second tore open his throat. The third and fourth impacted against his pectorals. Somewhere between the fifth and seventh, he threw the rock above his head away, sending it sailing into the lake of fire rolling by them. Her eighth shot went wide. She didn't have time for a ninth.

His left forearm slammed into her face, shattering her teeth and tossing her into the air. She spun, out of control, and then crashed to the floor, rolling to a stop over two dozen metres away. She reeled, gagging on blood, and then spewed a mouthful of gore and ivory shrapnel. In a single blow, he had nearly killed her, the force almost enough to snap her neck like a twig.

Bruised fists hammered stone, a broken grimace opening in her features, and then she charged at him, a wounded, animalistic howl escaping her lips. He watched her, expression passive, as she barrelled forwards, her eyes narrowed, her mouth a crimson hole. Her claws sank into the flesh of his chest, slicing through muscle, until her fingers could feel the warmth of his blood. The blades chipped against his ribcage, shattering on bone, lying in his wounds to slice apart her hands as she plunged deeper into him.

His hands came down on her shoulders, two fists to deaden her arms, before they gripped her biceps and began to pry her away. Uroboros coiled around her, serpents the colour of obsidian crushing her bones, squashing her muscles. She felt them bite at her, sinking under her skin. The pain made her scream. But it was too late now. The point of no return had come and gone. There was no point in holding back, no point in worrying about self-preservation.

She fought him, sinking her fingers into the wounds littering his torso, the ones created by his fusion with the parasite. She gouged at his flesh, ripping it out in chunks, but she didn't want a pound of it. She didn't want a single ounce. There was no toll that would satisfy her, other than to tear him limb from limb. The abomination inside him slithered out, pouring over her. She went blind. Her throat closed up. She felt the white hot pain of something shredding away the side of her face. Still she clawed at him, hammered him with closed fists, stabbed with fingers broken and swollen with bruising.

And then she was hurtling backwards, her ribs shattered by the impact of his palm. Her lungs went still, her heart freezing in her chest. Pain welled up inside her, seizing her in a stranglehold. Darkness clouded her vision. She could feel it, the creature, clinging to her body. On her skin, they felt like snakes. In her skin, they felt like spears. They burrowed into every muscle, pierced every organ, infected every cell. All she could do was lie, paralysed and terrified, as Uroboros ate her alive.

Something slithered across her cheek. Agony blossomed as it popped her eyeball, and then the tendril wriggled inside, rooting itself in her skull.

-x-x-x-x-x-

All at once, she understood.

She had always wondered what kind of man Wesker had been before his infection. He had already been a monster when they had first met, all those years ago, even if she hadn't known it at first. His humanity had been pretence, masking a brutal and sadistic reality. Knowing the truth, knowing the kind of creature he was, she wondered what had made him that way.

Had the virus stripped him of his morality? Had it turned him into the killer he now was? Had he _ever _had a soul?

As Uroboros wriggled its way through her body, absorbing her, changing her, she knew the answers. Corruption was in his nature. If he hadn't been born into it, then he had grown into it, but the contagion wasn't to blame. Maybe at first he had been held in check by the limitations of mortality, but he hadn't been mortal for a long time now.

She knew because, as she joined with the parasite, she could still feel those old emotions. Pity for the people Umbrella had abused. Sorrow for the comrades she had lost. The hot stain of revulsion that those past trysts with him had left on her skin. They didn't fade for a moment. They weren't replaced with cold, hard ruthlessness. Even as she became more like Wesker than she had ever wanted to be, she knew that they were nothing alike.

Instead, she was something more, something moral and righteous. He didn't have the strength to be a god. He was selfish, cruel, driven by avarice. He was everything a good devil should be. The power he'd achieved had been squandered in the pursuit of his own egotistical ends. He wasn't worthy.

She would be different. She would be the god he could never be.

The numbness of death gave way to pain, worse than anything she had ever felt before. Nothing - not the tear in her face, not the mouthful that had been ripped out of her shoulder, not the myriad of other wounds criss-crossing her body - had hurt like this. Even as her body throbbed with the agony of her rebirth, she knew that she could take it. She was strong enough.

She rose back to her feet. With every movement, her shattered bones ground together inside. The Uroboros retracted beneath her skin, leaving raw wounds gaping across her torso, oozing dark gore. She could feel tendrils of it moving inside her. They wrapped around the broken fragments, binding them together, forcing them back into the semblance of a skeleton. In her muscular limbs, in her thick, trunk-like torso, she felt them bulge like swollen veins.

She didn't fear them anymore. They were doing their duty, repairing damaged tissue, knitting her injuries back together. She wasn't going to be like him - picture perfect to hide the lie inside. She let them close the holes, but kept the scars.

For a few moments, her head hung slack on a broken neck, but with a jerk and a crack she corrected it. Her missing eye was still blind. She could feel a mass of the parasite pulsing in the socket. Given time, it would produce a flawless replica of the original. She'd have to make do without it right now.

She saw him watching as she resurrected. The damage she had caused was already gone. His pretence of humanity was back, but she knew he would abandon it in a heartbeat if he needed to.

For the first time since she had met him, she could read his expression. He was intrigued.

Her lips cracked, blood the colour of the volcanic rock beneath their feet spilling out. "I'm gonna break you," she growled, through a mouthful of fluid, "I'm gonna make you fucking pay."

He exchanged fascination for contempt, a sneer breaking the hard line of his mouth. His posture eased into one of readiness, beckoning her to play. On limbs bound with parasitic splints, she lunged forward. Movement was easier than it should have been. Her speed surprised her. She felt as though she was flying. All of her fatigue was gone, replaced with energy, boundless and absolute. It was exhilarating, even if every step was like stamping on broken glass. And she knew what that felt like.

She leapt towards him, bringing her leg around in a high roundhouse. Her boot connected with the side of his head, his arm rising a heartbeat too late to deflect it. The impact sent a bullet train of agony rocketing up her leg and then her spine, derailing in her brain. He staggered, the blow shattering his jaw. Then, he lunged back at her, thrusting his hand out in an impaling strike.

Even if he'd managed to land the blow, she didn't think it would have killed her. Piercing her heart wouldn't do him any good, considering it wasn't beating. She wasn't dancing to that old rhythm anymore.

She deflected his arm and then kicked him under the chin. Her leg rose with all the supple grace of Uroboros itself. She'd never been able to get her foot up that high in the past, and she'd taken ballet, albeit at age five. His head snapped up, blood ejecting in a spray from his lips. His elbow came back at her as he reversed the smooth motion of his arm, hammering her in the side of the head and knocking her away.

With a nonchalant motion of his hand, he snapped his dislocated mandible back into place. His stoic mask didn't waver, the pain never compromising his composure. She threw punches, her arms working like pistons, each blow slamming against his forearms as they snapped up in defence. A straight from him rattled her skull, before his feet thrust into her chest, right then left. She flipped backwards, turning almost a full circle in the air, before crashing down on her face.

They might have been even in biology, but he was still the more experienced fighter. And in battle, experience was often the edge that won out.

His hand bunched in her hair, ripping matted tresses out at the roots. She grabbed his wrist, ramming the broken stubs of her claws into his abs, sawing them back and forth across his stomach. They shredded muscle fibre and flesh, but the wounds were shallow. She was missing her babies already. He released her, wrapping his fingers around her throat instead, crushing her windpipe.

She leered up at him. He was still fighting her like she was a human being. She'd have to teach him a lesson. Letting him cripple her airways, mangling cartilage and bursting arteries, she dropped onto her back, grabbing him by the upper arms and jamming her boot into his crotch. His grip came loose, taking some of her neck with it, and then he vanished over the side of the plateau. With any luck, he'd been pitched headlong into the river of lava circling their battleground.

She looked over the edge and saw him sprinting towards her, boots churning loose rock as he surged up the near-vertical incline. His fist rose in an uppercut, knuckles on a collision course with her chin. She leapt away as he reached her level. He missed her by inches. Then, his foot slammed into her stomach, blasting her backwards.

She skidded to a stop, lifting her guard as he charged at her. He hammered her with a hail of blows, rights and lefts, kicks and knees and elbows, his limbs a blur of violence. His strikes beat out a rhythm of wet crunches on her body as he pulverised her, crushing bones, crippling muscles, bursting organs. This was more like it. Now he was really _fighting_ her.

She started to laugh, a broken cackle rising through her mangled throat.

Was this how he felt? This energy? This clarity? This control? No matter what he did to her, she was ready for more. Nothing that happened had any consequence anymore. There was pain, yes, but it wouldn't leave her a vegetable. It wouldn't reduce her to a quivering, demoralised wreck. And it wouldn't kill her.

No wonder he acted the way he did; who was going to stop him?

She sidestepped a front kick, ducked a straight punch, twirled away from a roundhouse. Then she met him head on. Her fist demolished his jaw. Her forehead smashed into the bridge of his nose. Her boot popped his testicles.

Blood soaked the crotch of his combats, and she grinned. She'd never punted him that hard before. Every movement she made was a heady rush of power.

He started to smirk. She could tell that he was enjoying himself. It had to have been years since he had fought an equal, and he was making it clear that he relished the opportunity. His confidence didn't waver for a moment, even though she matched him. His posture, his expression - all remained stoic and self-assured. He still didn't see her as a real threat.

She punched him. He kicked her. They reeled away from one another, and then snapped back into readiness.

"That the best you can do?" she asked, the words grating across her throat, blood squirting from the fissures in her neck that had yet to heal.

She spread her arms, prodding at the parasite inside her with her mind. She wanted to find out what her slimy little tagalong was capable of. It burst out of the skin around her shoulders, slithering the length of her arms, binding tight around her biceps and forearms. With a flick of her wrists, it solidified, turning into claws at her fingertips, mimicking the blades she'd lost in Wesker's ribcage. Mania lit her eyes and split her mouth into a grin.

He watched the transformation, features passive. Then, he lifted his arm. His fingers balled into a fist, his flesh splitting, a cascade of slithering tendrils spiralling out. She lunged at him, eager to slit the little copycat from balls to throat. Her talons raked the ground as she lowered her body to leap, before flinging herself into the air, bringing her hand up in a rising slash. He parried her, the blade that his right arm had become clashing against her claws.

The moment her feet hit the ground, she spun, swiping at him. He moved with fluid grace, blocking her attacks, muscles tensing beneath his skin as he braced for every impact. She forced him back, driving him into retreat. He whipped his blade across her throat and then leapt from the plateau, landing on a ridge that overlooked their battleground. Blood and cartilage spewed out of the hole in her neck, and a growl followed, red foam bubbling from the wound.

She kicked off, following him into the air. This jumping more than a couple of feet at a time thing was new to her, and her aim was off. She overshot, landing on the edge of the rock walkway, and then slipped over the precipice.

Pebbles fell away beneath her, vanishing into the magma lake rolling below. Her claws raked stone, looking for purchase. Uroboros whipped out, burrowing into the cliff face, anchoring her in place. If she'd been capable of breathing with her windpipe sliced open, she'd have heaved a sigh of relief. Instead, she just swung herself up onto the ridge.

She heard his boots pounding rock and spun to see him bearing down on her, arm poised to strike. He lunged for her torso, but she brought her hands up knock the strike away. It cleaved through the air over her head, its wake tugging at her matted tresses. Deadlocked with him, she kicked out, shattering the ball of cartilage in his knee. He let out a grunt, sinking into a crouch, and then slammed his palm into her chest.

She tumbled, her skull cracking against the ground three times in quick succession, and then she rolled to a stop on her back. The dizziness faded as the parasite inside her cradled her brain, massaging away the bruising. Tucking her knees into her chest, she flipped up onto her feet. She saw him barrelling towards her and reacted on instinct. Her claws locked around his as he stabbed for her heart again.

They strained against one another, and it was as much a battle of wills as a battle of physical strength. She slipped her claws away, letting Wesker sink to the elbow in her stomach. Then, she stuck her fingers through his face. He didn't fall limp like dead men were supposed to. Instead, his left hand wrapped around her wrist, pulling her talons away from his head.

The holes in his skull fused shut, muscle fibres and pale skin knitting together to cover the wounds. His mouth twisted into a snarl the moment it reformed. He rose, lifting her into the air by the blade transfixing her abdomen, and then tried to fling her away across the lake, burning and rolling beneath them. She grabbed him by the shoulder with her left hand, sinking her claws into his flesh, letting her parasite coil around his to fuse her in place.

The razor edge started to saw through her guts as he tried to throw her off. She vomited gore in his face, a cascade of it splashing across his emotionless features. He looked up through the bloody pools filming his eyes and she grinned back at him. This was going to end, but not the way he'd wanted or expected.

"Always said you'd be the death of me," she said. Her breath stirred the loose hairs hanging at his forehead. She shook the Uroboros away from her free hand and caressed a cheek painted crimson. "Never thought you'd be able to say the same."

She lunged forward, smashing her forehead into the bridge of his nose. He was only distracted for a split second, but it would be all she needed.

Her passenger tried to resist. It knew what she was planning, and it wanted to live. But it was her bitch. It was going to do what it was told. She thrust her hand down, writhing tendrils spewing out from her wrist, hammering into the ground, each whip crack splitting the rock at her feet. The bridge crumbled under the power of her barrage, and then collapsed.

They plunged into the molten rock, the white hot stream swallowing both her and Wesker up to the waist. He stifled a scream, grinding his teeth together as he fought the rising agony. She let it out, singing her pain into air thick with smoke. It was unbearable. There was no sense in trying to resist. She howled and thrashed and hammered his chest and face with her fists. The lava bubbled and popped around her, every undulation of it slowly corroding her body and driving her further into a frenzy.

And then she started to laugh, wild and crazy. She could feel the Uroboros wriggling up through her body, trying to escape destruction in the lake of fire. It burst out of her face in quivering tendrils, tearing open the skin on her cheeks and forehead, reducing her features to shredded ribbons. They arced into the air, trying to leap away, and then splashed down, writhing and shrieking as they burned.

But it wasn't her own imminent death that was giving her the glee. For every turncoat parasite that escaped her body, one slipped the bonds of Wesker's soon-to-be corpse as well. They were abandoning him to his fate for the small chance to save themselves, like the proverbial rats fleeing a sinking ship.

When it came down to it, they were just as self-serving as he was. That was the kind of irony she could appreciate, even if she was dying.

By now she knew that only what remained of the parasite was keeping her alive, and even that would not last much longer. She grabbed Wesker around the neck, leering into his face. Her legs found his, coiling around them until their hips met, fusing in the heat. He was trying to struggle, to free himself, but his powers were leaving him with every wriggling black mass that leapt out of his body.

He'd never resign himself to death. He'd never accept it with grace. He believed he was worth more than to die in some long-forgotten hole off the coast of the West African boondocks.

And he was fucking wrong.

There was no more fitting destiny than this for him. In the fire was where he belonged.

She lay back, letting the lava engulf her, becoming a weight around his body to drag him down to hell. He lasted a few more seconds before he slipped beneath the surface. The stream closed over his head.

A single bubble marked their passing, and then the magma flowed on as they burned beneath, entwined like lovers.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Josh eased the helicopter over the lip of the caldera and descended into the glow of the inferno. The rotors sent smoke scattering to the far corners, giving him an unobstructed view of the bubbling lake below, and the islands and spires scattered through it.

He scanned the inside of the crater for any sign of life. He'd read Shakahnna Morgan's profile in the mission briefing. Everyone had known about the American tagging along with their platoon, even if some of them had been less than enthusiastic about it. He'd been ambivalent. He hadn't seen what an outsider could bring to the team that they hadn't already had in abundance. But now he was desperate to find her, his frustration mounting.

A shock of red hair. A mass of black armour. A squat figure wearing a khaki coverall. Any of those would have been confirmation that he wasn't the sole survivor of the operation. Instead, all he saw was lava and scorched rock.

Firelight glimmered on the bulk of a boulder resting atop a wide plateau. He brought the chopper in closer. The wreck of a cargo plane resolved out of the murk as his downdraft chased away the smog. There was someone down there, a dark figure wreathed in the haze.

Its build was far too small to be the woman he was looking for, and as he drew closer he knew that it wasn't her. This was a taller, more slender female, wearing a padded flight suit instead of the B.S.A.A issue fatigues. She put her hands to her face, holding her hair in place as the maelstrom whipped it into a frenzy around her.

Her head looked like it was tilted at an awkward angle, but maybe it was just a trick of the light.

He didn't know who she was, but he wasn't going to leave her standing in that hellhole, waiting to burn. He swung around and started to descend.

-x-x-x-x-x-


End file.
